​Christian DEI from 33 AD

By Ed Raymond

Do Christians represent diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) people?

Perhaps the “rapture” is on its way. A critic of Project 2025 which Donald Trump “knew nothing about” prior to the 2024 election is moving forward at a fast pace. Actor Mark Ruffalo defined it this way: “Project 2025 is not a game, it’s white Christian nationalism. It is the Sharia law of the ‘Christian’ crazy people who aren’t Christian at all, but want to control every aspect of your life through their narrow and exclusionary interpretation of Christ’s egalitarian, inclusive, and kindly teachings.”

Project 2025 is the American Taliban in action: forced birth and no abortion, Christian religion only, ban same sex marriage and all LGBTQUIA+, Christian education only, white immigration only, ban women’s vote and rights, with men having leadership and control of the family and deportation of all non-whites. About a year ago Trump announced a taskforce led by Attorney General Pam Bondi with the task of removing anti-Christian bias, putting Christian prayer back in schools, and identifying anti-Christian groups as terrorist organizations.

Although the Bible (“approved by God”) is emphatic about loving your neighbor, the MAGA movement with the red 45-47 caps oppress, deport and ban immigrants, oppose the rights of women, condemn the entire LBGTQUIA+ community, support the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment and crack down on religious freedom. But if Trump sweated a lot in the heat of Palm Beach while playing a round of golf recently, he could possibly think global warming and climate change is no longer a hoax.

The big question: Would Jesus Christ recognize Christianity today? Maybe Jesus Christ is signaling the rapture is just around the corner for planet Earth. And Trump just got a new message.

The UN annual state of the global climatereports: it’s hot as hell

Maybe climate change is not a hoax after all. The report by climate scientists says the last decade was the hottest in history. And here is the kicker: the rate of ocean warming has more than doubled over the past two decades, compared with the average of the last 45 years. That’s why the Gulf of Mexico is heating like a hot tub and causes tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and power outages for 1,500 miles to eastern New York.

“The burning of oil, gas, coal, and forests releases heat, trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, which are all at their highest level in at least 800,000 years,” reads the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) 2025 State of the Global Climate report. “At present, humans and other life forms on the surface directly suffer only a small fraction of heat from the sun because 91% is absorbed by oceans, 5% by the land, 1% warms the atmosphere and 3% melts ice at the poles and high mountains.”

Are we all waiting for tribulation?

According to the theology and religion popular among conservative right-wing evangelical Christians, The Rapture is a sudden, secret event before the end of the world. Jesus Christ is in the sky and clouds bringing living and dead believers to Heaven just before a period of global destruction called The Tribulation.

People are snatched naked from where they are, whether in an airplane, bus, car, bathroom or bed. A cartoonist I favor caught the moment: A “saved” man is snatched from the sidewalk and is quickly shedding his clothes about 15 feet in the air. His “sinner” friend who will be left behind to suffer, is yelling at his friend in the sky: “Throw me your wallet!!”

Of course, I would be one of those left behind because I’m a hated-by-Trump Democrat and basically an atheist after spending 90% of my life as a Roman Catholic or Lutheran. The left behind will endure seven years of hellish tribulation, including war, climate change, global warming, natural disasters and the rule of the Antichrist (also called The Beast). Obama, Bernie Sanders, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and many liberals in history will take turns being the Antichrist.

Some believers say there will be a second coming. According to some believers, Armageddon will be a battle that will defeat the Antichrist and Christ will rule the earth for another thousand years before the Final Judgment. Will Homo Sapiens move to a higher level of humanity than we have now? That’s another big question.

We might have another “Great Diversion” to seek change, as Republicans forced on us in the 1940s-1950s. They sponsored a “Freedom under God” campaign with free marketeers preaching capitalism and corporatism assisted by 17,000 clergymen, radio and prophetic words on 45,000 billboards proclaiming “The New Deal” was creeping socialism. They reminded folks that unions did not align with Biblical truths, progressive taxes and the fact that Social Security was a Pagan thought.

Let’s take a quick trip through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise

Many people involved with the world’s Christian religions, whether theologians or pew sitters, say the Christian religion is tested by Willam Shakespeare of Anglican England and Dante Alighieri of Roman Italy. Hamlet. in his famous “To be, or not to be” monologue, questioned the idea of an afterlife with the perplexing line “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” Hamlet also talked to his ghost father stuck in Purgatory.

Dante’s “Divine Comedy,”the longest narrative poem in literary history, has been the leading creator of Roman Catholic thought for more than 700 years — and will probably remain so. The poem is 14,233 lines in Italian comprising 100 cantos, or sections. It takes an average reader about 12 hours to read. English translations take 500 to over 900 pages.

It has been translated into more than 60 languages involving more than 474 complete translations. (My personal copy has 692 pages.) Nearly half of all translations have been in English, German, French and Spanish, spoken in many Catholic countries. English is the official language of 67 countries and 27 other entities. That means billions of people have read Dante’s major work over 700 years that shocks people with three major sections: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.

For starters, I want to use his description of a pope who had sinned and had corrupted the Vatican. The pope is jammed upside down in rocky earth in Hell, legs flailing around with feet in a fire — forever. Of course, Satan is also in Hell — but he is buried to the neck in ice!

Here is a brief description of the Nine Concentric Circles of Hell

First Circle: Called Limbo, here the unbaptized and nonbelievers reside. No torture or punishment but they are forever separated from God. Unbaptized babies are never allowed out of Limbo.

Second Circle:reserved for the lustful and sex-addicted. They are in a forever storm blown constantly around Hell.

Third Circle: gluttons lie in vile slush produced by an icy rain and think about food all the time.

Fourth Circle: reserved for the greedy, avaricious and miserly who hoard possessions and those who squandered them.

Fifth Circle:here the wrathful fight each other on the surface of the river Styx and gurgle while under water in swamp-like water.

Sixth Circle:heretics are trapped in flaming tombs.

Seventh Circle; This is the third largest concentric circle because of the number of rascals assigned, particularly those who are violent against people and property. They are immersed in a river of boiling blood. Many suicides are turned into thorny bushes and gnarly trees and are bitten by Harpies. Thieves are chased by vicious and ferocious dogs. Blasphemers and sodomites are restricted to a flaming desert and pelted with fiery flakes.

Eighth Circle: single lines with the fraudulent, panderers, pimps and seducers who are whipped by demons as they march in lines for all eternity. Flatterers are dumped in human excrement. People who committed bribes or illegal pardons are placed head-first in holes in rock and have flames burning the soles of their feet. Sorcerers and false prophets have their heads twisted backwards and cry tears so they can’t see. They cannot see into the future. They see only what is behind them. Corrupt politicians are immersed in boiling pitch, which represents dark secrets and corrupt deals. Hypocrites march constantly in gold-covered lead cloaks. Thieves are chased and bitten by snakes and huge lizards. Fraudulent advisors are encased in flames. Sowers of discontent are hacked by sword-carrying demons. Alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers and impersonators are infected by “forever” diseases.

Ninth Circle: the largest and most serious one. Traitors lead the list. The worst of the worst are stuck in ice over the head, like Judas. They can cry about their situations, but the tears freeze their eyes shut. Satan, the worst of the lot, is in the middle of the traitors because he is a traitor to God. He is three-faced with mouths that chew on three traitors. He is a huge, terrifying beast, wallowing and stuck up to the waist in the ice of tears mixed with the blood of those he is chewing on. Brutus and Cassius are in two mouths and Judas is in the other one. Judas is the worst, and is skinned by Lucifer. Satan is impotent, ignorant and evil. He has six wings like real angels have but he can’t escape.

Dante spent his life fighting for and with the Catholic Church

In the Middle Ages of the 12th and 13th Centuries, the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in Florence, the largest city in Italy at the time, had a number of Catholic organizations that had major disagreements about politics and religious beliefs. Dante was heavily involved with a number of them.

Consequently, Dante was sentenced to death in absentia by the city of Florence in 1302 for committing “corruption, fraud, and embezzlement” while serving as a city leader. The chief magistrate sentenced him to pay a huge fine and to be burned at the stake if he ever returned to Florence. The sentence was later changed to beheading and his four sons by marriage were given the same sentence. Sounds like he was in “bad” trouble or “good” trouble depending on your Catholic beliefs!

If you want to know more about the history of the Roman Catholic Church, read all of Dante’s poems and prose. Dante lived out his life in exile, spending 20 years away from Florence, his home city. His personal love life with the beautiful Beatrice of his youth is fascinating and is included in many sections of the “Divine Comedy,”although he is married and has four sons with another woman. Beatrice has made it to Paradise and through the gate but she and Dante have a relationship while he is visiting greedy pardoners, three popes and Satan in Hell. By the way, Florence, Italy officially revoked the death penalty for Dante 700 years late in June of 2008.

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